The original idea for a monument to Christ came from a group of Brazilians who, in the wake of World War One, feared an advancing tide of godlessness. Church and state had been separated when Brazil became a republic at the end of the previous century, and they saw the statue as a way of reclaiming Rio ”“ then Brazil’s capital city ”“ for Christianity.

The first proposal was for a bronze statue of Christ on Sugar Loaf – the giant lump of rock with a smooth, curved summit that rises out of the ocean at the entrance to Guanabara Bay. But it was soon decided that Corcovado (“hunch back”) – a peak in the forested hills behind the city – was a better location.

Da Silva Costa, whose design was chosen in February 1922, imagined the statue facing the rising sun: “The statue of the divine saviour shall be the first image to emerge from the obscurity in which the earth is plunged and to receive the salute of the star of the day which, after surrounding it with its radiant luminosity, shall build at sunset around its head a halo fit for the Man-God,” he wrote….

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The fundraising activities of one of the world’s wealthiest evangelical churches have come under scrutiny after dozens of complaints.
Members of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God went house-to-house raising funds this Christmas “to keep the church doors open”, despite accounts filed last month showing that it had £2.7 million in the bank. Globally, the rapidly expanding Brazilian-based Church has assets estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Its British arm has sent hundreds of thousands of pounds to Brazil to help to build an “exact replica” of the biblical temple of Solomon at a cost of £130 million.

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In the fall of 2012, Wilmington resident Mike Moran said a ”˜see you soon’ goodbye to his son Brendan Moran as he stepped aboard a flight to Brazil to continue his work with a sex trafficking ministry there called Shores of Grace Ministries.

Brendan sent newsletters each month letting his friends and family know how he was doing in Recife, Brazil, producing music for Nic and Rachael Billman, a Pennsylvania couple who founded Shores of Grace. Brendan was working to record the work of the ministry there as one of their music directors.

The Billman’s moved to Brazil to work with the prostitute and street children populations there in late 2010, bringing their four children with them and building a ministry staff who speak Portuguese. The ministry holds church on the streets of Recife, organizes well water projects for communities in a desert region outside of Recife and hosts Father’s Love Banquets where they invite Brazilian prostitutes to a formal dinner. Another of the ministry’s goals was to open Project Bethany to house young girls who were leaving prostitution or trafficking situations. In the fall of 2013, Shores of Grace opened its first rescue house with 10 girls.

Now the Moran family is bringing the Billman’s to the Wilmington area to speak about their sex trafficking ministry.

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“Persecution is growing because Christianity is growing in the places where people are persecuted,” said Todd Johnson of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Speaking during a Dec. 5 media call, he characterized anti-Christian persecution as “growing fast.” His research estimates that one in five Christians, 500 million people, currently live in countries where Christians are likely to be persecuted. By 2020, their numbers are expected to rise to 600 million, 25% of the Christian population.

Johnson noted that the Christian population has significantly shifted from Europe and North America to the “Global South”: Africa, Asia and Latin America.

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On Friday, the faithful throngs crowded along Copacabana beach to walk the Stations of the Cross, life-sized constructions along Avenida Atlantica, at which the cross of World Youth Day and the Icon of Our Lady paused and the dramatization of each station was televised on the multiple big screens along the beach. At the end of the procession, the cross was raised on the stage from which the Pope delivered a sermon in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese. For Oliver Petter from the Diocese of London, currently in his second year of seminary in Oxford, Friday evening’s events were particularly impressive. The difference in the symbolism in Brazil was of note for him ”“ he commented that many countries perform the stations of the cross with a ”˜body’ present, but: “”¦to process with an empty cross here with a crown of thorns”¦ it symbolizes absence, loss”¦ and yet 1 million people there on the beach, such a manifestation of resurrection, in stillness and reverence”¦ that was very moving”¦”’

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On his debut abroad the first Latin American pope put a spring in the church’s step in the world’s largest Roman Catholic country. He also””with a long, informal press conference””underlined the new style that his papacy has brought, heralding a softer tone on sexual issues, and a tougher line on Vatican cliques.

Humble and plain-speaking, Francis drew huge crowds despite the wet and cold of the southern winter. His energy and urgency was a marked break with the sense of drift that has afflicted the Latin American church. And it contrasted with two lacklustre visits by his cerebral predecessor, Benedict. A final mass on Rio’s Copacabana beach drew 1m people: a record rivalled only by John Paul II’s trips to Poland. He told them: “Do not be afraid to go and to bring Christ into every area of life, to the margins of society, even to those who seem farthest away, most indifferent.” At a meeting of bishops, he called for a new “missionary spirit” and decried “obsolete structures”. He led by example, visiting a favela (slum) and meeting the sick, young offenders and former drug addicts.

In word and deed, that was a rebuke to the church for its retreat from the poor urban peripheries, where Pentecostalist competitors have flourished. He also, by implication, challenged the Pentecostalists’ theology, often a gung-ho message of prosperity through piety, with a forthright attack on capitalism’s “disposable” culture.

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The Pernambuco Court of Appeal (Tribunal de Justiça do Estado de Pernambuco) has stayed a lower court decision giving ownership of church properties in the state to the minority faction loyal to the national Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil (IEAB). The effect of last week’s decision is to return custody of the church properties to the Diocese of Recife and its bishop, the Rt. Rev. Miguel Uchôa, while the court conducts a de novo review of the dispute.

On 31 July 2013 Bishop Uchôa told Anglican Ink the diocese was ready to turn over the properties to the IEAB but on “the 21st the state high court judged our appeal and gave us a positive answer. The state high court judges will now review the case. It means that they accepted [the case for study] and said ”˜no’ to the first judge who had given the [properties] to the IEAB.”

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But what do you remember?

Throngs of flag-waving, chanting, cheering, singing, praying, young people extending for as far as the eye can see? A motorcade moving slowly through a vibrating, pulsating mass of humanity while a smiling Pope gestures, waves, and dispenses blessings to left and right? All this against one of the most breathtakingly beautiful natural backdrops in the world: the beach of Copacabana and the mountain of Corcovado. And of course you remember the babies ”“ babies and more babies, being kissed and cuddled and caressed by the Pope. But maybe you were paying particular attention and you also recall a visit to a slum and a hospital and a meeting with young prisoners and a prayer vigil and a papal pilgrimage to a Marian shrine”¦
But do you remember what he said?

“Promote justice and dialogue to hear the cry of the poor”, “Serve the community and a culture of encounter”, “Christ shares the crosses we carry in our lives”, “Is ours a Church that can still warm hearts?”, “Grandparents are important: the aged and the young build the future together”, “Faith isn’t a fruit-salad: don’t water it down”, “The Church is close to those suffering from addictions”, “Christian hope means being surprised by God”, “We cannot be part of a throwaway culture”, “Ours is a revolutionary Faith”, “Those who don’t go to Church are the VIP’s invited to the Lord’s table”, “We must learn how to embrace those in need”, “Jesus asks us to play on his team””¦

Read and listen to it all.

The second attitude: openness to being surprised by God. Anyone who is a man or a woman of hope – the great hope which faith gives us – knows that even in the midst of difficulties God acts and he surprises us. The history of this Shrine is a good example: three fishermen, after a day of catching no fish, found something unexpected in the waters of the Parnaíba River: an image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Whoever would have thought that the site of a fruitless fishing expedition would become the place where all Brazilians can feel that they are children of one Mother? God always surprises us, like the new wine in the Gospel we have just heard. God always saves the best for us. But he asks us to let ourselves be surprised by his love, to accept his surprises. Let us trust God! Cut off from him, the wine of joy, the wine of hope, runs out. If we draw near to him, if we stay with him, what seems to be cold water, difficulty, sin, is changed into the new wine of friendship with him.

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By all accounts, Pope Francis has already won over many hearts in Brazil with his simplicity and message of caring for the poor. But as he travels the country on his first overseas trip as pontiff, he will be speaking to a group of young Catholics who hold far more liberal views than the church hierarchy on a number of issues, including female priests, homosexuality and abortion.

After arriving in Rio to enormous crowds on Monday, the pope spent Tuesday resting and having private meetings at the Sumare residence where Pope John Paul stayed in 1980 and 1997. Thousands of young pilgrims filled a rainy Copacabana beach to attend a series of religious-themed concerts that were part of World Youth Day, which, despite the name, is a five-day event that began Tuesday and is ostensibly the reason for the pope’s visit to Brazil.

But the young people Francis encounters are not necessarily representative of young Catholics worldwide, and they hold some views that run sharply counter to those espoused by Francis and the Roman Catholic Church.

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Christianity in Brazil is big business ”” not only are major superstar pastors represented at the convention, but businesses like Sony Music have booths as well.

Brothers Lucas and Renault Lourenço have been singing together since they were in their teens, and together they are the Brazilian evangelical version of the boy band. Now in their early 20s ”” sporting matching faux hawks and wearing jeans ”” they came to reach out to their established fans and sell records to new ones.

“This fair attracts many people, even people who are not evangelicals, which is essential because that way people will know the gospel and so every day there will be even more of us evangelicals,” Renault says.

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A month ago, hundreds of thousands of young people took to the streets of Brazil to protest corruption, wasteful government spending, bad schools and hospitals, police brutality, and other abuses of power. On Monday, Pope Francis, in his first venture abroad, will dive into the middle of that ferment when he begins a weeklong visit to the world’s largest Roman Catholic country.

“This is a crucial moment for the church, the nation, society and the people, heightened by the fact this is Francis’ first trip,” said Fernando Altemeyer Jr., a theologian and philosopher at the Pontifical Catholic University in São Paulo. “Brazil has changed and things are bubbling, but there is no clarity. Everything is new and unknown, in the country and the church, even for the bishops.”

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On Pentecost Sunday all hell broke loose in Rome. Following Mass that day, the unpredictable Pope Francis laid hands on a demon-possessed man from Mexico and prayed for him. The YouTube video of this encounter was flashed around the world, and the story caught fire: Is Pope Francis an exorcist? The Holy Father’s Vatican handlers were quick to deny such. The pope simply offered a prayer of deliverance for the distraught man, it was said. Exorcism in the Catholic Church is a sacramental, a sacred act producing a spiritual effect, which must be done according to the officially prescribed Rite of Exorcism. And yet what the pope did on Pentecost Sunday in St. Peter’s Square was more than a simple prayer for someone to get better. It looked for all the world like a real act of spiritual warfare.

Timothy GeorgeThe scene now shifts to South America, the continent where Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born and has spent most of his life. The place: All Saints Church, in Steenrijk, Curaçao, in the Anglican Diocese of Venezuela. The date: May 12, 2013, one week before the pope’s exorcism-like event in Rome. The preacher: The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church (formerly known as ECUSA). When she was elected to her post in 2006, Father Richard John Neuhaus described it as an occasion of great sadness. His reaction reflected neither personal animus nor schadenfreudlich glee. Rather, he saw her accession to this high office as likely to deepen the pain and division within the Christian community. Sadly, he was right.

In Venezuela, Bishop Katharine also confronted a demon””the one found in her sermon text for the day, Acts 16:16-24. This is Luke’s account of Paul’s exorcism of a manic slave girl in Philippi. The bishop’s sermon was really a polemic against what she called, in postmodernist lingo, “discounting and devaluing difference.”

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Anglican-Catholic dialogue is back on the agenda this week as a team of ecumenical experts from both sides meet in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro from April 30th to May 6th.
This 3rd meeting of the current Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission will continue its work on the relationship between local and universal Church, as well as the way in which both communities respond to the most pressing ethical issues of our time.

To find out more about the meeting, Philippa Hitchen talked to Mgr Mark Langham from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity who serves as Catholic co-secretary of ARCIC III”¦..
She also spoke, during the recent enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, to an Anglican member of ARCIC III, Bishop Christopher Hill who chairs the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity. He told her that Pope Francis’ emphasis on his role as the Bishop of Rome is extremely encouraging for the whole ecumenical endeavor”¦

Listen to it all (about 8 1/2 minutes).

In 2003, after the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop within the Anglican Communion, the Province of the Southern Cone severed its relationship with the Episcopal Church. It also broke communion with the Anglican Church of Canada after one of its dioceses in 2002 authorized a rite for blessing same-sex unions. Are you still in broken communion with these two provinces?
Yes. In 2010 when an earthquake struck in Chile, I received many, many phone calls from [the Episcopal Church Center in] New York offering us money. But I said no; not out of arrogance but because we had broken communion with TEC and it would not be right to accept their money.

Did you ask permission of the local Anglican Church of Canada bishop to visit here?
No, because I am coming to another, different Anglican church.
n 2003, the Province of the Southern Cone offered Episcopal oversight to conservative Anglicans who had left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada but who wanted to realign with another province. Does this make you a primate of the Anglican Church in North America along with its elected primate, Bob Duncan?

No. That is over. We provided temporary supervision. When ACNA was founded in Texas in 2008 the very next day I had breakfast with Bishop John Guernsey and said, “My churches in the States will now be under your supervision. Let me know what I should do to pass them to you.” Others like [Bishops] Frank Lyons of Bolivia and Greg Venables may have taken a bit more time but the Southern Cone decided to pass the [North American] churches to the new ACNA primate.

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After an intense, busy but fascinating few days in Argentina, I’ve finally found space to write my first blog update, so here goes.

After recovering from the 13 hour flight we spent the first full day learning about the history of Argentina, the present financial and political climate, and the Anglican Church. There will be much to share about the political and financial situation and its impact on daily life when I return. Suffice to say there’s much anxiety and fear about levels of crime and violence. But the people of Argentina are resilient and optimistic and I experienced that in the people I have met.

90% of population still have some vestiges of faith, enough not to abandon it.

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In Argentina, they say that if you want to understand the priestly soul of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then you have to know the villas miserias, literally “villas of misery,” meaning the slums in Buenos Aires where the poorest of the poor are found.

According to Fr. Juan Isasmendi, who lives and works in one of the villas, this is where the future Pope Francis filled his lungs with the “oxygen” he needed to think about what the church ought to be.

There are roughly 20 of these slums in Buenos Aires, often just a block or so away from gleaming high-rise office towers and luxury apartment buildings. Bergoglio’s pastoral revolution was to hand-pick a cadre of especially strong, dedicated priests not just to visit the villas but to live and work here, sharing the lives of the people down to the last detail.

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“The pope comes, and then I beat [Andy] Murray and Novak,”… [Juan Martin del Potro] said. “There could be something there.”

His grin was as huge as his forehand. OK, nothing is quite that big.

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The first Jesuit pope? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. Bergoglio is an old-school Jesuit, formed by classic Ignatian spirituality and deeply committed to an intelligent, sophisticated appropriation and proclamation of the full symphony of Catholic truth ”” qualities not notable for their prevalence among members of the Society of Jesus in the early 21st century. I suspect there were not all that many champagne corks flying last night in those Jesuit residences throughout the world where the Catholic Revolution That Never Was is still regarded as the ecclesiastical holy grail. For the shrewder of the new pope’s Jesuit brothers know full well that that dream was just dealt another severe blow. And they perhaps fear that this pope, knowing the Society of Jesus and its contemporary confusions and corruptions as he does, just might take in hand the reform of the Jesuits that was one of the signal failures of the pontificate of John Paul II.

There will be endless readings of the tea leaves in the days ahead as the new pope, by word and gesture, offers certain signals as to his intentions and his program. But the essentials are already known. This is a keenly intelligent, deeply holy, humble, and shrewd man of the Gospel. He knows that he has been elected as a reformer, and the reforms he will implement are the reforms that will advance the New Evangelization. The rest is detail: important detail, to be sure, but still detail. The course is set, and the Church’s drive into the Evangelical Catholicism of the future has been accelerated by the pope who introduced himself to his diocese, and to the world, by bowing deeply as he asked for our prayers.

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“Pope Francis stands as the figure of unity for all Catholics wherever they reside. The bishops of the United States and the people of our 195 dioceses offer prayers for our new leader and promise allegiance to him,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Intense prayer from all around the world surrounded the election of Pope Francis. The bishops of the United States thank God for the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the inspired choice of the College of Cardinals.”

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Vatican press briefing by Federico Lombardi s.j. March 14th

Coverage:
Thursday, March 14th
+ Reuters – New pope slips out of Vatican for morning prayer visit
+ Anglican Ink – Francis a friend to Argentine Anglicans
+ Anglican Ink – Anglican accolades for Francis
+ Independent – Falkland Islanders greet election of Argentine as Pope Francis I with surprise
+ Guardian – Pope Francis: the reaction back home
+ BBC – Profile: Pope Francis
+ Telegraph – Pope Francis: interactive panorama shows thousands thronging St Peter’s Square
Wednesday, March 13th
+ Catholic Herald – Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio: a profile
+ CNS: Argentina’s Cardinal Bergoglio elected pope, chooses Francis
+ Vatican Radio – Who is Pope Francis?
+ Reuters – Live updates with world reaction
+ BBC Live reaction

It was Pep Guardiola, the former manager of Barcelona, who once suggested that Lionel Messi should be observed instead of dissected. He is, after all, widely considered the world’s greatest soccer player, not a biology project.

“Don’t try to write about him,” Guardiola said. “Don’t try to describe him. Watch him.”

On Sunday, Messi set an international record by scoring his 86th goal in a calendar year, for both Barcelona and the Argentine national team, delivering an average of one goal every four days, more frequently than a starting pitcher takes the mound, as often as Starbucks opens a new store in China.

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Watch it all. Simply stunning.

It was once the case that Brazilians worshipped as one in the thousands of Catholic churches spread around this vast country. But a religious revolution is taking place, and a new dynamic form of charismatic Evangelical Christianity is taking over. A quarter of Brazilians now worship in Evangelical churches, many of them practicing the Prosperity gospel which promises them happiness and fulfilment in return for a proportion of their wealth. And its wealth, along with power and influence, which the Catholic Church previously claimed as its own, is the result of this increased membership. Paulo Cabral investigates why Brazilians are turning form the Catholicism which has had a presence in Brazil for over 500 years, and how the charismatic churches have become so popular changing the way many Brazilians in some of the poorest areas of the country profess their faith and accumulating this vast wealth and political power along the way.

Check it out (27 minutes via listening link or download).

Here’s a quiz: Google received more than 1,900 requests from governments worldwide to remove content from its various services last year. Which country led the planet in this dubious category, with 418 such demands?

China? Iran? Syria?

No. It was democratic, pluralistic, economically vibrant Brazil.

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A public statement applauding steps toward peace talks in Colombia was issued recently by representatives of churches and ecumenical organizations that form the Peace Commission of the Evangelical Council (CEDECOL), the Ecumenical Network in Colombia and the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI).

The statement, released on 28 August and responding to an announcement that the Colombian government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ”“ People’s Army) were working on a proposal to start peace talks, expressed thankfulness to God and hope for a more peaceful future in the country, which has been wracked by decades of conflict. The peace talks are scheduled to begin 8 October in Norway and may also include the National Liberation Army (ELN).

“The people of Colombia deserve peace with justice,” Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), said in response to the ecumenical statement and the potential for peace talks. “As an ecumenical community, we ask all WCC member churches to pray that the process of peace talks will proceed as soon as possible.”

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“We are facing more obstacles than we ever have before, but this is no surprise. This believer represents the very first person who wants to be baptized in this place. Satan’s not just going to give that up easily,” [John]Costa said.

For [Aaron] Juergens, that’s no reason to quit, but encouragement to persevere, even in sickness and freezing temperatures atop a mountain.

“I’m up there, wearing six jackets and three gloves and five socks and I really just kind of want to sit in a bed,” he said. “But then you think about those people (who haven’t heard yet). If we turn around, who is going to come next? I mean, how many people have turned around? The world is getting smaller. The day is coming when everybody is going to have no excuse whatsoever for not hearing. There’s no excuse for turning back.

“We keep going.”

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That Western governments preferably want WikiLeaks crushed is indisputable. Former US soldier Bradley Manning languished in solitary confinement for 11 months on suspicion of passing classified documents to WikiLeaks, leading to the UN’s special rapporteur on torture to accuse the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. A US grand jury is currently examining evidence that might link Assange to Manning, though it is yet to report. Fears that Assange could end up extradited to the US ”“ and what might happen to him there ”“ are not without foundation.

But that does not mean Assange should be immune from very serious allegations in Sweden. Two women have both accused Assange of rape, and there have been repeated attempts by some of his supporters to discredit them. There have been suggestions that they are part of some kind of CIA honeytrap. The campaigning journalist John Pilger has described them as “concocted charges”. But Assange’s own lawyer, Ben Emmerson, does not dispute the sincerity of the accusers, arguing in court: “Nothing I say should be taken as denigrating the complainant, the genuineness of their feelings of regret, to trivialise their experience or to challenge whether they felt Assange’s conduct was disrespectful, discourteous, disturbing or even pushing at the boundaries of what they felt comfortable with.”

But what has been particularly disturbing is the attempt by some supporters of Assange to claim that the allegations do not constitute rape….

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To its critics in the church, the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru is not deserving of its name. It has spurned the pontiff, they say. It is far from Roman Catholic orthodoxy, they argue. In their minds, the school ought to be called something else entirely.

“It’s false advertising,” said Fernán Altuve, a conservative legal expert who supports a recent order by the Vatican that the school change its name by eliminating references to the pope and the church. “It’s as if I sell you a bottle that says Coca-Cola but what’s inside is Pepsi.”

The fight over the name of what is considered one of the top universities in South America is part of a fierce battle over academic freedom and the authority of the Vatican that is unfolding here. La Católica, as the school is known, is the alma mater of many of Peru’s elite, including President Ollanta Humala.

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(Via email–KSH).

After discussion and prayer and in accord with its canons the Provincial Executive of the Cono Sur together with its College of Bishops, did not ratify the election of the Ven. Dr. Michael Pollesel as bishop-coadjutor for Uruguay. The meeting took place this past week in Montevideo (21 to 25 May). Pollesel previously had served the Anglican Church of Canada as its Secretary General. At the same time the Province promised its close cooperation with the diocese in its future decisions.